Minister of Land, Infrastructure and Transport Kim Yun-deok pauses in thought during a plenary session of the National Assembly's Land and Infrastructure Committee on Tuesday. [Yonhap]
Minister of Land, Infrastructure and Transport Kim Yun-deok pauses in thought during a plenary session of the National Assembly's Land and Infrastructure Committee on Tuesday. [Yonhap]

Minister of Land, Infrastructure and Transport Kim Yun-deok invoked a "bread" analogy originally coined by a predecessor under the Moon Jae-in administration to explain the difficulties of addressing housing supply shortages in Seoul and the greater metropolitan area.

At a plenary session of the National Assembly's Land and Infrastructure Committee on Tuesday, Democratic Party of Korea lawmaker Ahn Tae-jun pressed the government to communicate more actively with the public, saying citizens may wonder why housing remains scarce despite repeated government pledges to boost supply. Kim responded that the ministry would step up its public outreach on the supply issue.

She then added: "What is always painful — as someone once said — is that if housing supply were like stamping out bread, we could just work through the night. But please bear in mind that it inevitably takes considerable time before the results of actual supply become visible."

Her point was that delivering housing requires time at every stage — securing land, obtaining permits, completing compensation, breaking ground and finishing construction — before residents can feel any tangible effect.

Ahn noted that annual housing ground-breakings in the greater metropolitan area had fallen 37 percent, from a 10-year average of 242,000 units to an average of 152,000 units over the past three years. In Seoul, he said, the figure dropped 51 percent, from an annual average of 62,000 units over the past decade to 30,000 units over the past three years. "There are multiple compounding factors — the project financing crisis, soaring construction costs — but the decline in ground-breakings in the past is now showing up as a supply shortfall today," he said.

Ahn also noted that the government plans to break ground on a total of about 1.369 million units in the greater metropolitan area through 2030, averaging 274,000 units a year, with targets of 268,000 units in the metropolitan area and 66,000 units in Seoul this year alone. "That is a significantly higher level than the past three years, and the government needs to explain this more proactively," he said.

The original "bread" analogy came from Kim Hyun-mee, who served as the Moon administration's first land minister from June 2017 to December 2020. At a plenary session of the same committee on Nov. 30, 2020 — when soaring apartment prices had become a major political issue — Kim Hyun-mee explained that a projected drop in apartment supply for 2021 and 2022 stemmed from a sharp decline in permits issued five years earlier and the cancellation of public housing sites. She then said: "If apartments were bread, I would stay up all night to make them." The remark drew wide attention as the first public acknowledgment by the Moon government that supply was genuinely insufficient, breaking from its earlier position that supply was adequate.

Also at Tuesday's session, People Power Party lawmaker Kim Mi-ae argued that the Lee Jae Myung administration's real estate policy amounted to a "Moon Jae-in administration season 2." "The Moon administration's failure was rooted in an over-reliance on regulation, and the Lee administration is applying that approach even faster and more broadly," she said.


jshan@heraldcorp.com